


bell-jar experiment

by inverse



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-13
Updated: 2006-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tradition makes fools of us all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bell-jar experiment

Sasuke has always had a certain opinion about his own family the way children have opinions about their mother or sister or best friend. The thing about most things you love is that it is difficult to admit they aren’t perfect, and Sasuke as a child had never doubted the fact that his family was the best. It was a deformity that arose from centralisation.

The problem was that they were acknowledged. When Sasuke is seven Itachi makes the cut for ANBU captaincy, and this is how everything is made a hundred times clearer, like a bifocal lens that removes the blur, throws the situation into sharp, sudden, piercing clarity. This is the moment that Sasuke decides that the Uchiha clan is infallible, for reasons he cannot count with his hands and feet, for reasons that have already proven themselves. For reasons like Itachi. He tries to make sense of it, spins the idea around in his head and decides there is no counterevidence. The answer is straightforward and simple – they always work the right way, they are the elite.

But he has this feeling he’s got the wrong answer, because when he tells Itachi his conclusion Itachi only smiles and says, “We all work too hard, Sasuke.” It seems to imply that his impression is only illusionary.

*

Months later Itachi kills the whole clan, and all it leaves Sasuke is the feeling of bile rising at the back of his throat when he dreams about his parents’ bloody faces, the taste of vomit fresh on his tongue. Days that go by in a blur. Nightmares. The first thing he considers doing is to find Itachi, hoping that Itachi would tell him it was all a bad dream like the ones he keeps having, so he does, wandering out into the streets like a walking car wreck. He cannot find Itachi.

Afterwards he realises that Itachi is gone for real. He walks out the streets with his eyes shut, resisting the urge to open them when he steps on something soft – it might be the arm or the leg of some distant relative whom he’s never exchanged five sentences with in his whole life, and even those people are gone. He traces his way out of the huge labyrinth with his fingers on the walls, knowing he’s staining them with blood, feeling as if he would never get out again, and when he finally hears people talking he’s so relieved he runs and stumbles and scrapes his knees raw.

“I always had him pegged as one of the good ones,” the woman next door tells him when he moves into the new house that the committee gives him a week later, and her son peeks out from behind her and waves – Sasuke does not remember having seen him anywhere, and instead frowns at the thought of Itachi – she changes the topic abruptly at the look on his face, “Do come over if you are bored, we will be so pleased to have you.” It is the tone of voice all adults think works with seven-year-olds.

There are hordes of people who turn up outside his house everyday, giving him food and money, and when he tells them he has enough, they say that it is the right thing to do because the Uchihas had served Konoha for generations. It makes Sasuke wonder why Itachi didn’t want to do so, but he knows that nobody knows the answer. Somehow having strangers care for him only accentuates the actuality that the people that he has known all his life are gone, all gone, just like Itachi is gone, and with the possibility that Itachi might have wanted to get away from what had defined the Uchihas for years, all Sasuke knows is the sort of hate that digs deep into his blood, the sort that he thinks Itachi wants him to feel.

*

At twelve Sasuke activates his sharingan. Perhaps it is an accident, perhaps not, but at least he’s got half of what he’s always wanted. He finds himself wondering how perfect it would be if he kills Itachi with it. He finds himself wondering about a lot of things. What if Itachi was framed? What if Itachi came back to ask for forgiveness? What if some part of him would grow to forgive Itachi? What if, what if, what if. A million what ifs lying dormant in the membranes of his thoughts.

At twelve Sasuke also meets a teacher who has the same eyes as him. If anything it makes Sasuke trust Kakashi a little more, to see that there’s someone who still possesses something that belongs to his family. He reasons that Kakashi must have known about Itachi, back when he was still in ANBU, or even known Itachi personally. So when Kakashi teaches him chidori he takes the opportunity to say, “My brother – he was one of the best, wasn’t he,” and Kakashi regards him for a moment before replying, “One of the best.”

It doesn’t take him too long to put two and two together, to put things into their place, like some silent confirmation that yes, Itachi did that because he thought he was too good for his clan, because that’s what he had always suspected, out of the infinite number of possibilities that could have been. He knows he shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but that doesn’t stop him from believing in it. Kakashi watches him silently, as if about to say something, and Sasuke stops it from happening by telling him, “Let’s continue,” and anything Kakashi is about to say stops right in its tracks, anything like, “Don’t think silly things.”

In theory Itachi kills his own clan because he was the best, wanted to be the best, and Sasuke has never thought otherwise. He feels the red bleed into his eyes and the electric-blue chakra mounting in his hand, and imagines the expression on Itachi’s face when he dies.


End file.
